


Never Mix Your Spice Chirality

by ariellesallee



Series: The Adventures of Liv Shepard (Side Stories) [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Mass Effect 3, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Paragade (Mass Effect), Spacer (Mass Effect), Vanguard (Mass Effect), War Hero (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 10:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3171479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariellesallee/pseuds/ariellesallee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shepard tries to bake a cake for Garrus’ birthday, with… mixed results. Set mid ME3, during the Citadel DLC.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Mix Your Spice Chirality

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before Liv Shepard's world turned into Shakarizorah instead of just Shakarian. This will probably remain canon for "The Adventures of Liv Shepard," however, given that nothing in it contradicts Tali being involved in their relationship. (Or maybe I'll re-write it when the series gets there!) I hope you enjoy it regardless.

Liv Shepard stared at the mess on her counter in dismay. It was a brown, blobby mass of unrisen dough that somehow looked both undercooked and burnt. She was _certain_ she’d followed the recipe exactly. Yet the blob in her pan looked nothing like a cake. Where had she gone wrong?

Ever since Kaidan had come by a couple days ago and made dinner, Shepard had been looking for an excuse to use the kitchen in the apartment Anderson had given her. It was a warm and cheery space that she’d made over with bright red counters. She liked the space, often ate there, sipped her morning coffee while leaning against the counter. After a lifetime on ships and stations simply having a _real kitchen_ seemed like a luxury. To let the space go otherwise unused seemed a waste. When she’d found out Garrus’ birthday was coming up, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

The problem was, while there were many things Shepard excelled at, baking clearly wasn’t one of them. She was an expert at reheating rations and getting takeout. Commander Shepard made sure the Normandy was stocked to the brim with good ingredients and spices, even if other people cooked with them. But the Hero of the Galaxy couldn’t bake a fucking _cake._

She resisted the very strong urge to kick the oven door.

There was a _swish_ from behind as the apartment’s door opened and Garrus’ voice echoed from the high ceiling: “Liv, you home?”

 _Shit._ He was back early. Shepard grabbed the first thing within reach (a metal spoon) and started trying to scrape the failed cake into the composter.

"Oh, there you are." The turian walked over toward the kitchen, his long stride making short work of the space. "I was thinking, for dinner, we could go out to—" He paused as he reached the kitchen’s entrance and sniffed the air. " _What_ is that smell?”

Shepard turned with the pan in one hand and the spoon in the other. She sighed. No hiding it now. “Oh, nothing. Just a… burnt cake.”

Garrus stared at her with an unreadable expression. Well, turians were often unreadable, but Shepard liked to think she’d come to understand _most_ of her boyfriend’s facial expressions over the time they’d been together. This, though, she couldn’t figure out.

"A cake." Garrus’ mandibles twitched. Was that amusement? "You were… baking a cake. Why?"

Shepard cleared her throat, turned away, and started trying to scrape the cake into the composter again. “Well,” she said as casually as she could, “it’s your birthday, isn’t it?”

Garrus blinked. “How did you find that out?”

Shepard shrugged. “I asked EDI. And then when EDI didn’t know, I asked Liara.” The damn thing wouldn’t come out of the pan! Maybe she’d scrap them both.

No, no, she couldn’t put metal down the composter. Shit.

"You… wait…" Garrus took a step further into the kitchen, right next to the center island so his height blocked the light. He stood with his arms folded, his subvocals and the tilts of the plates above his brows _definitely_ conveying amusement. “You asked the Shadow Broker when my birthday was?”

"Well… yeah." Shepard cleared her throat and kept scraping as though the cake pan was a particularly loathsome husk whose face needed bashing in.

Silence fell between them, no sound but the faint splashing of water from one of the apartment’s water features and the scraping of that metal spoon along the bottom of the cake pan.

After a couple of minutes, Garrus finally said, “Okay, so, why did you bake the cake, then?” He had clearly been trying to reason out her intentions and come up empty.

Shepard paused in her scraping, peered at him. “Because it’s your birthday,” she said slowly.

"Right. And?" Garrus was blinking at her like he had no idea why those two things were connected.

Shepard sighed and slammed down the pan and spoon, mess and all. “And I wanted to do something nice for you, okay?” She knew it was maybe unfair to snap at him, but her frustration just boiled over. “Humans bake cakes for birthdays. Or, well, humans with cultural backgrounds in the UNAS do. Some of us.”

"Oh." A pause. The turian was still frowning. "And… ummm… birthdays… matter to humans, then?" This was said very, very carefully.

"Well, yes." Shepard peered at him, turned to face him. "They don’t to turians?"

Garrus shrugged. “Not really. I didn’t do anything special, being born. We celebrate the anniversary of graduating boot camp, promotions sometimes, but that’s not the same thing.” He hesitated a moment, then, _very_ slowly, “Uhh… Liv… sweetie… when’s your birthday?”

The way he said it, trepidatious and concerned, made Shepard laugh. “April 11. Don’t worry, hon. You didn’t miss it; I was in the brig.”

Garrus relaxed slightly. “Oh. Good. I’ll… uhh… you know, assuming we’re _alive_ in April, I’ll…” He was floundering a bit.

Shepard laughed again and put up a hand. “You don’t have to figure it out by yourself. I’ll give you some pointers.”

Garrus nodded, seeming mollified. He eyed the cake. “So… you were trying to bake a _dextro_ cake, then?”

Shepard nodded. “Chocolate. I remember you like chocolate. The, uhh, Dr. Michel debacle?”

Garrus cleared his throat. Neither of them liked talking about that. “Uhhh… yeah. But, Liv… why didn’t you just _buy_ one?”

At this Shepard’s cheeks reddened a bit and she turned away. “I… well, I was thinking… you’re always telling me how turians do things for their partners, to prove their worth. Like… cooking for them. And you do those things for me, even though you don’t need to. You even try to cook for me even though we don’t eat the same food. And I thought I should…” She couldn’t quite finish the sentence. How could she explain that the weight of proving her worth as a romantic partner sometimes felt heavier than the fate of the galaxy? At least the second burden she was fairly certain she was qualified to bear, as much as anyone ever could be.

A pair of thin, strong arms enfolded her from behind and Garrus pulled her close against his chest. “You never have to prove your worth to me, Olivia Shepard,” he said softly. “You’re already worth more to me than anything else ever could be.”

Shepard wasn’t very good at these displays of emotion. Romance had never been her strong point. Garrus was good at it for all his protests otherwise, but some days she had to work really hard to sort out the thorny confusion the turian made of her thoughts. Sex she was good at. Friends she was great at. Commanding troops? Easy as breathing. Romance? _Run and hide, terror ahead._

But, then, the thing about Garrus that made their relationship work was that he didn’t expect anything in response to such a pronouncement except her staying there in his embrace for as long as she was comfortable doing so. He never pushed, he followed her cues on when she was okay with romantic overtures and when she wasn’t.

So she closed her eyes for a moment and relaxed, pretended for a minute that there was no war outside, no battlefields to go back to, nothing more pressing in her life than figuring out how to salvage something out of the wreckage she’d made of her attempts to give her boyfriend a nice birthday.

After a few minutes of this she said, with eyes still closed, “I bought you a present.”

"Oh?" Garrus said it softly, but she could feel the rumble of his subvocals in her back; it made her shiver. "Presents are good."

Shepard pulled away, turned to smile at him, then walked past him out of the kitchen, across the walkway and down a step into the living room. There was a long package sitting on the table in front of the fireplace, wrapped in silver paper. She bent down to pick it up. “See, it’s wrapped and everything.” She held it out to him.

Garrus, who had followed her over, took the package. He turned it over and looked at it curiously. “What is it?”

Shepard rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest, but she was grinning. “Open it and find out.”

Garrus smirked at her in the manner of turians—with his eyes, mostly—and removed the wrapping as carefully as he could. There was a moment when he winced as he tore it with his talons and Shepard shook her head, smiling fondly.

His gasp when he found what was inside was _most_ satisfying. “Liv… is this… it can’t be. I didn’t think it was even out yet.” He held a long silver cylinder with projections coming off one end and evenly spaced holes along the side.

Shepard grinned. “Yep. It’s a top-of-the-line high-velocity sniper rifle barrel. Level V.”

"How did you…?" He was still staring down at the thing with something approaching reverence.

She shrugged. “I spent a _lot_ of credits at the Castle Arcade. I’m damn good at that Claw Game now, though.”

"It’s perfect," Garrus said, awe and excitement in his voice. "Spirits. I am going to kill _so many Brutes_ with this thing.”

Shepard laughed and walked over, taking the barrel from him. “I love it when you talk shop.” She set the barrel aside on the table and then took his hands. “What do you say… we go get some cake, and dinner, and then come back here and… celebrate?” She had deliberately dropped her voice into a more sultry tone, and looked up at him in a way she knew he found sexy, gray eyes peeking up through long lashes.

Romance she might be floundering at from inexperience, baking she might be horrible at, but seduction? Commander Shepard could probably seduce a Reaper if she really wanted to. Not that she liked to brag.

Garrus smiled down at her, his blue eyes sparkling in a way that told her it was working. He dropped his voice a bit too, pulled her close to feel the rumble while he bent down to press his forehead to hers. Never let it be said she hadn’t chosen a partner who could do his own seducing right back. “I’d say… if they’re always this good, this turian might just start celebrating birthdays.”

The cake pan was entirely forgotten until the morning.


End file.
